Former Pottstown residents ride out Sandy in Ocean City, witness its aftermath

By
Evan Brandt, The Mercury

Sunday, November 4, 2012

OCEAN CITY, N.J. — Former Pottstown-area residents Susan Burke Mangano and her husband Joe meant to get off the New Jersey barrier island where they live before Hurricane Sandy made landfall, but they didn’t make it out in time.

As a result, they had no choice but to ride out the hurricane in their Simspon Avenue duplex.

“Our house is on stilts, so it sways in the wind, but we never felt anything like this,” said Mangano, who retired as the nurse at the former Lower Pottsgrove Elementary School before moving to the shore.

“It was like trying to walk in a ship that’s pitching on the waves,” she said.

Mangano and her husband snapped photos and shot video of the storm and, as a result of riding the storm out, where in a unique position to document its aftermath.

Her videos, posted on YouTube, have been sought after by the Associated Press and The Discovery Channel, but she gave The Mercury permission to post some on our web site as well.

(Go to www.pottsmerc.com to see some of Mangano’s videos.)

Residents of Ocean City for the past five years, Mangano said the homes of many of their neighbors are not elevated and so were much more severely damaged than theirs.

“All our neighbors across the street have several feet of water,” she said.

“We had a storage unit under the house and we’ve got some stuff out on the porch drying off now,” she said Friday. “Things like my mom’s watch and Joe had some signed baseball photos that we’re trying to save.”

But when Sandy was raging, they were mostly wondering whether they would need to be the ones saved.

“We knew there were National Guard at the firehouse and we had a friend who was there, and he said they would come get us, but only if our lives were in danger,” said Mangano, who raised her two sons in East Fourth Street before moving to Upper Pottsgrove.

Luckily, it never got to that point, although at times it seemed like it might, she said.

“We kept trying to think to ourselves, what if...” she said.

It wasn’t supposed to be a consideration at all, as they had every intention of leaving.

“I was really sick and we were trying to get ready. We were packing like crazy and taping the windows,” Mangano said. “ We had reservations in two places, just in case.”

But Sandy snuck in before they could get out.

“We were waiting for low tide and a friend of ours on the island called and said ‘there is no getting out,’” she said.

“So Joe moved the car to high ground at the Super-Fresh and we got out the batteries and candles,” Mangano said.

Luckily, they had plenty.“I practically cleaned out the store of batteries when we knew the storm was coming, and the store clerk laughed at me when I checked out,” she said with a chuckle.

But they were glad to have them, as well as their cell phones, which continued to work.

Without electricity or a radio station that would come in, they were blind to Sandy’s whereabouts.

“We kept calling my son Christopher, who lives in Spring City, and asking where the storm was,” she said.

As it turned out, the storm was just south of them, which is not where you want a hurricane to be, because the north side of its counter-clockwise swirl often pushes the most water ahead of its winds.

Those winds also pushed around the Manganos’ house.

Elevated by 12 to 15 feet, with another unit above theirs, in had a lot of wind resistance.

“My son kept saying ‘the wind is just going to pick your house up like ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and that’s exactly what we felt like, Dorothy inside her house in the twister,” Mangano said. “It sounded like a train and the whole house was rocking.”

Then, the eye of the hurricane passed directly over Ocean City “and everything stopped. That lasted about an hour and the rain came again, but the wind was only gusting at 50 or 60 miles per hour. We’re used to that,” Mangano said.

On Tuesday, the extent of the devastation became clear.

“Everything is covered in sand and they had a curfew for those of us who were here,” she said.

“You can’t drive on the streets because there are sand piles everywhere and some cars are getting stuck in sand just like you do after a snowstorm,” said Mangano.

Her photos and videos show a surreal landscape, sand piled on the street as crews work to try to clear the public pathways.

Dumpsters line the streets as those who stayed, or have managed to get back to their homes, discard the water-soaked remains of some of their most cherished possessions.

It is the Manganos’ first hurricane along the shore and they are not anxious to experience another.

“We’ve been through two Nor’easters and Irene, but this by far exceeded Irene,” she said of last year’s hurricane, for which they evacuated.

“Everyone kept telling us we were crazy to stay and I kept telling them it wasn’t by choice,” Mangano said with a laugh.

“Now we’re kind of in shock. Joe is working and all I can think to do is keep doing laundry,” she said.